Producing the product: A case study of law and its absence

TY - JOUR

T1 - Producing the product: A case study of law and its absence

AU - Carr, Helen

AU - Cowan, David

AU - Wallace, Alison

N1 - © 2017 The Author. Journal of Law and Society © 2017 Cardiff University Law School. This is an author-produced version of the published paper. Uploaded in accordance with the publisher’s self-archiving policy. Further copying may not be permitted; contact the publisher for details.

PY - 2017/11/3

Y1 - 2017/11/3

N2 - In this article, we seek to develop socio-legal studies through arupturing of the ideas behind the social and the legal, ideas that aremost often presumed to exist and are used to explain that which isalready there. The ubiquity of law and the omniscience of society havebecome givens. We use a product called shared ownership as a casestudy, arguing that the product was given life by a legal document (thelease) which itself represented the translation of a range of differentperspectives and audiences (albeit not the consumer), and which, itself,has been translated, most notably in a 2008 High Court decision. Thatdecision counterintuitively found that the lease had created an assuredshorthold tenancy (albeit a long one) but, despite its threat to theproduct, has been largely ignored. We discuss the processes of, andreasons for, the translation through which that ignorance has beeninduced.

AB - In this article, we seek to develop socio-legal studies through arupturing of the ideas behind the social and the legal, ideas that aremost often presumed to exist and are used to explain that which isalready there. The ubiquity of law and the omniscience of society havebecome givens. We use a product called shared ownership as a casestudy, arguing that the product was given life by a legal document (thelease) which itself represented the translation of a range of differentperspectives and audiences (albeit not the consumer), and which, itself,has been translated, most notably in a 2008 High Court decision. Thatdecision counterintuitively found that the lease had created an assuredshorthold tenancy (albeit a long one) but, despite its threat to theproduct, has been largely ignored. We discuss the processes of, andreasons for, the translation through which that ignorance has beeninduced.

U2 - 10.1111/jols.12051

DO - 10.1111/jols.12051

M3 - Article

SN - 0263-323X

VL - 44

SP - 93

EP - 110

JO - Journal of Law and Society

JF - Journal of Law and Society

IS - S1

ER -